Several years ago, when my oldest son was a baby and we lived in Hawaii, I spent most of my free time drooling over the photographs in Martha Stewart Living. I knew once we moved back to the mainland, I would entertain people in a way that would make Martha proud.

When we got back, I got to work. I gathered pieces for baking and serving as I went along: cake pedestals, cookie cutters, a kitchen torch. As we hosted small dinner parties, I soon realized how expensive it was, and soon after that started to wonder what all the fuss was about. Though I loved trying to create something lovely, I knew most of my friends didn’t really care what I did; they just wanted to get together. Eventually, I was asking myself why I needed to impress anyone.

It’ll take a few hours of therapy to get to the bottom of that question. But I did come to one solution: I stopped worrying about entertaining friends and decided to turn to my own family and create something beautiful for them.

Sometimes it was dinner for two: fillet mignon with matchstick fries and shallot sauce. Other times it was something the kids would love on a snow day, like hot chocolate affogati. I liked to find ways to celebrate and show the people around me that I loved them.

In my head, of course, was this vision of once a week having the whole family dress for dinner and eating with the best china and silver. But I haven’t gotten around to that yet. If I ever get nice china and silver, I’ll let you know how that turns out.

Anyway, you know my story. Somewhere between the fillet mignon and the chocolate affogati, my marriage went to poop.

And things are still spinning around here. Sometimes I feel like everything is fine and forget for a few moments that someone in this world hates my guts, and other times I remember that fact and want to go to every matinee of Avatar and drown my sorrows in a huge bag of Almond Joy Pieces (Have you tried these yet? They’re like M&Ms with coconut in them. Sorry, Connie. Not for you).

While I wait for things to settle out, I have decided to get on with my dreams. I will be making a beautiful life for my family anyway. For we have plenty to celebrate.

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You all know I want my kids to eventually have some degree of sophistication when it comes to eating, and nothing shouts bad manners louder than someone who turns his or her nose up at something served for dinner (Tripe and sweet breads, of course, being the obvious exceptions to this. I believe those and other similar cuisine entitles the one served to get up and run as far away from the dinner table as possible).

My daughter is about as picky as they come. She won’t eat pasta. Ever. This includes noodles of all kinds and in all cuisines.

So here is a list of techniques, suggestions, philosophies, etc. that I try to use. I’m not uber consistent, so maybe by writing it down, I’ll start to be better about the whole thing, and one day my three little lovelies will be as unpicky as I am.

1. Be as consistent as you can. This is sometimes very hard, as life is insane for everyone.   But if at all possible, try to serve meals at the same time every day. My grandmother used to actually serve the same meals every week: spaghetti on Wednesday, franks and beans on Saturday (unless it was summer, then she served crab), some sort of roast on Sunday, etc.

2. Don’t force anything on them. I think this may actually be the reason my 6-year-old still won’t eat pasta. I may or may not have possibly made her eat some once. Maybe. Either way, I learned it isn’t such a good idea. The best thing to do is just put out the meal and say, “This is what I have made. You may choose to eat it, or you may choose not to eat it, but I am not making anything else. Out next meal will be tomorrow morning at 7:00.”

3. Parents decide when and what to serve, children decide if and how much they will eat. That line, or something close to it, came from a book I read in college with a title like How to Keep Your Kid from Getting Fat (I tried finding it on amazon, and couldn’t, but it was something like that). If you consistently follow this rule, the power struggle should eventually go away.

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Life has a way of lurching forward whether we stop to realize it or not.

Brooke and I had been planning this picnic for — oh, I don’t know, a million and one weeks. Amidst our crazy summer, that for some strange reason seemed to be filled with never ending days and weeks, was the hope of something fun and simple and perfect.

But coming up with something beautiful in the midst of chaos is a tall task, one I barely had the creative energy for.

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I didn’t realize until tonight that I started my blog exactly one year ago Sunday! It may not be that significant a milestone for many people who keep blogs, but for me, it has been a huge milestone.

Bear with me a moment as I get a bit personal without spilling too much (I imagine I will be spilling a bit more in the coming months).

A year ago, I started this blog as a way to express some of my interests and talents, hoping I would one day be able to see it grow into something more. Any of my expectations for readership were far surpassed in my first few months of blogging, and I was thrilled to see my stats on Google Analytics sky rocket in such a short time. It was in those beginning weeks I gained some of my most loyal readers.

Then in early October, my personal life was turned upside down (sorry I can’t really elaborate at this point, I can be more open about it in a future post), and blogging became very difficult. I want to say to all my loyal readers, who bore with me through the fall and winter, THANK YOU. I know there were weeks when I didn’t have much to share, but you came anyway, and I really appreciate that.

In the spring, I guess I got my second wind, because I was able to post more. That was also when my brother and I started to come up with the new look and feel of the blog, and the rest, of course, you can see before you.

I have grown in so many ways in the last year. Amidst my darkest days, I have felt the true love of friends, which has helped me carry on. Though I don’t know most of you, my readers, personally, your comments have helped keep me afloat in the most challenging time of my life. And because of that, this year has also been one of the most rewarding.

So, thank you! To everyone. I hope we have many more wonderful years to come, as we share with each other ideas on how to make our families well-read, well-bred, and well-fed.

big smooches,
Jaime

When I went up to bed last night, this is what I found.  I ran and grabbed my camera, so thankful I had a tripod and a large aperture.  

You know when you watch your children sleep, and you are just suddenly overwhelmed with joy?  Seeing my youngest two together was so poignant last night, I almost cried.  (My friend Brittany has a wonderful little post on this very subject that I printed off, I liked it so much. Click here to read it.) 

There was a perfect spot in this photo to add text, but how could I?

Now I have a little poll for you.  I usually prefer black and white photographs, but the light was so low in this, and the contrast so low, that I decided to go color, but now I’m not so sure.

Which one do you like better?  Post your answer in the comments, and the winning picture will get to go on top.

Oh . . . my goodness.  I have never been this giddy about a cookbook before.  And I have loved many a cookbook.

Family Meals: Creating Traditions in the Kitchen by Maria Helm Sinskey is not a quick fix meal plan book for busy families.  Instead it encourages families to spend time together in the kitchen by giving detailed instructions and recipes to make from scratch.  Some of the recipes include homemade ricotta cheese and homemade pasta and omelettes stuffed with brie and smoked salmon, crab cakes, bread-n-butter pickles, puffy apple oven pancakes . . . sounding good yet?   Most of those I just listed probably wouldn’t appeal to my picky eaters if I made them by myself, but I am hoping that by establishing a stronger tradition of cooking more together, they will eventually come around.  And if not, more for me!

Family Meals completely captures the life I have often pictured for my family—slow paced, relaxed, simple.   I usually envision living that way on a small pumpkin patch somewhere in New England with a golden retriever running around our huge farm we’ll use mainly for horseback riding.  But since it seems that dream will be shelved for some time, I suppose I can do my best for now with this book.

It is packed with beautiful photography and is printed on high quality matte finish paper.  It’s just gorgeous.

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This picture always makes me so happy.  It was taken a couple years before the following story.

Well, yesterday, I was feeling all joyful, so I took my two younger kids to the local T.J.Maxx and filled up the cart with all kinds of things for a toy drive at a local women’s shelter.  When they both threw major tantrums (akin to the aforementioned fit in the humilimom post), I had no choice but to leave the cart at the store.  The workers had to put everything away, which I am sure was a pleasure after the two screaming kids had finally exited.  Now I will have to go shopping again.  This time, without the children.

A new reader named Susan made a comment on the “manners don’t matter? excuse me” post.  She gave an example of how she taught her kids manners with a little toy pig at the table.  Go ahead and read her comment.
Then, since it’s been way too long, and since Thanksgiving is around the corner, I think we should start up a little dialogue about manners.  So, here’s the question:

How do you teach your kids manners for the dinner table?

and, another question for good measure:

What are your favorite family traditions for Thanksgiving?

Not very.  The kids are eating Spaghetti-o’s (Pixar Cars edition–Charlie’s really into Lightning McQueen these days), and I am eating chips and Guacamole (both from Costco).  I have a winter squash soup that I’ll post soon, I promise.

I want briefly to create a buzz about two of my friends who blog.

Some of you may already know Brooke—just about everyone I know knows her.  We crossed paths when we were teenagers (same youth conferences at BYU), and then again in college.   But we never knew each other until her daughter and my son were in kindergarten and their desks were separated when they were talking too much.  Anyway, her blog is called Conversations With a Cupcake.  It’s zany and fun and displays Brooke’s tireless energy and creativity.  Go check it out!

Also, my friend Theresa, who is the sister of my best friend from college, just put up a cool post on how to make edible play dough for your kids.  Never would I have thought of that, nor would I ever have the energy to do something like that since having my second kid, but for all of you supermoms (i.e. Brooke), it looks like a lot of fun!

That’s a picture of my daughter from awhile ago.  I didn’t have any recent pictures I felt like posting, so there it is.

My nieces and nephews call this place Narnia.  Nestled among trees and streams, stand the ruins of an abandoned mill.  We spent a few hours in this lovely place, drinking in the the beauties of a New England fall day.